‘The kid most likely’: Naming, Brutality and Silence within and beyond School Settings

Abstract

Violence in educational settings is a complex issue and the topic of a considerable body of international research literature (see, e.g., Casella, 2001a, b; Elliott et al., 1998; Mills, 2001). This volume of research asks authors and readers to rethink what is known and believed about school violence, and in this chapter I draw on three narratives in order to query the brutality of discourses within which children are labelled and silenced. The chapter is concerned with systemic violence (Watkinson & Ross Epp, 1997) and its discursive effects, calling into question: labelling practices that name children as particular ‘types’ of social subject; silencing practices that denigrate, disregard and dismiss those most vulnerable in unequal relations of power; as well as those discursive silences that tacitly enable the reproduction of violence. Through the figure of ‘the kid most likely’ – in other words, children who are constituted as those most likely to experience educational failure, to commit criminal offences, to pose risks to themselves and others – the chapter considers how discursive practices of naming and silence powerfully reproduce and normalise symbolic and material violence within unequal relations of power.